Today it was raining again surprise surprise so we decided to go to the Municipal House and to wander around the old town of Prague. The Municipal House is Prague's most prominent Art Nouveau building and it contains Prague's largest concert hall. We did not manage to attend a concert there but maybe next time! We saw the current art exhibit at the Municipal House which was a bunch of movie posters, advertisements, and other works by Alfons Mucha who was a Czech Art Nouveau painter. He apparently created a piece called the "Slav Epic" which is a series of twenty huge paintings depicting the history of the Czech and the Slavic people but it wasn't at this exhibition! All the exhibition did was hype up this Slav Epic but it was not there which I found really disappointing. It was interesting nonetheless but his style didn't appeal to me so we didn't go out and buy any reprints afterwards. And yes I do realize that the Slav Epic is exhibited elsewhere in Prague but we didn't get to see it.
We didn't take any pictures in the Municipal House so here's the tower that sits in front of it:
We also wandered over to Wenceslas Square. This is where people go to protest and have political rallies. It's an impressive place. I'd rally here.
We ate lunch at a cafe in the Municipal House where I enjoyed still more potato salad. Couldn't help myself. The desserts there were also amazing. We spent the afternoon reading and napping (this is supposed to be vacation after all), had leftover ham for dinner, then set out to see La Traviata at the National Theater in the evening.
Here are some pictures of the opera house. Since the audience was almost completely tourists I fit right in taking tons of pictures because everybody else was. You could tell there were mostly tourists there by the number of people wearing jeans! I was surprised because the opera was more expensive than the Czech Philharmonic yet people were much classier at the Philharmonic (I think because the audience there was mostly older locals). I was worried I wouldn't be formal enough in my dress and heels at the opera but I was wrong. The second picture below is of the ceiling.
La Traviata was good, but I don't think opera is my thing. It bothered me to have to read the words in English throughout the performance, and the storyline also bothered me. It made no sense! Martin said of course it makes no sense to us, it's written by Italians and it's set in 1800 so it's filled with drama and familial obligations that don't exist today. So what if Alfredo's sister's boyfriend won't marry her because Alfredo is dating an ex-prostitute! Get over it already!
Beautiful opera house though.
On the way back from the opera we tried to take some night pictures of the castle. They're a little blurry but you get the idea.
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